


Block

by msilene



Category: Original Work
Genre: Artists block, OC, Other, Story, origional story, writers block
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23573185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msilene/pseuds/msilene
Summary: This is an original story of mine from a while back, I wrote it for my friend based off of some art she did. Basically an average artists meets artists block (a monster)





	Block

I sighed in frustration, crumbling up my latest attempt at “art,” and throwing it in the trash. 

It deserves quotes because what I’d just wasted half an hour trying to create did NOT qualify as real art.

The paper was beyond reusable material, permanently marked with the ghost of my mistakes. 

Desperate, I reach for my phone and turn on an instrumental playlist, hoping to be inspired by the music.  
I began getting some better ideas, but non of them were right.  
Then, after what seemed like hours, when I’d nearly drifted off to sleep, I snapped up and began furiously drawing.  
I don’t remember much of the process, only the product.  
It was a dark forest, the sky a mysterious purple, with blends of dark clouds in the night atmosphere.  
Some trees would be taller than a redwood and some barely as tall as me. The floor was dark brown, a mulchy-soil with a certain petrichor that you could smell through the page, so calm you could heat the crickets chirping and the cool breeze of the night air.  
I sighed, content with my work (for once). I stretched out my sore muscles and I closed my eyes and let loose a long, loud, fatigue-induced yawn.  
When I opened my eyes I was extremely startled to see I was inside my artwork.  
I tried pinching my arm, but to no avail, I kept my hold on it until it was red and left a large mark.  
I reached out to a tree, one around my height with vines dropping down from the branches, but the tree was solid. I brushed the vines aside and they too were real.  
I inhaled deeply, and smelt the rainy, mud-like smell of the earth had after rain I’d thought of before, and felt the cool breeze, which would normally be calming but was the polar opposite at that moment. The wind chilled me to my core, leaving me shivering and feeling as if another gust of air blew by I would fall over.  
I folded my arms across my chest, shivering from the cold and beginning to panic.  
“What now?” I thought, fear swirling up inside me, squeezing my chest and restricting my airway, causing me to panic more.  
I tried to take a deep breath to calm down but ended up taking about twenty.  
“Okay, so, I’m stuck in a creepy drawing with no known way to escape. How’d you get yourself into this mess, Terri?” I mumbled sarcastically to myself, rolling my eye and holding my arms against my chest in frustration.  
I wracked my brain for ideas, pacing back and forth in a nervous frenzy, but no ideas came to mind.  
“Of course i think of nothing,” I whine to myself. “My brain hates me and gives me zero good ideas.”  
Feeling like i was about to be overwhelmed with anxiety, i sat down and tried to breathe.  
“Everything will turn out fine,” I assured myself quietly in my head, “You’ll see Mom and Dad and Chris and Steph and all your friends again. You’ll be back in art by first period tomorrow, turn in this demon-drawing and get an A. Chris will congratulate me by saying ‘Of course art is the class you have perfect grades in,’ and Dad will ask to hang it his office, but Mom will want it in the house. Steph will say ‘Another of Terri’s drawings?Isn't that every piece of art we have displayed?’ And Mom will just agree and say that we need to keep up with the theme.”  
That’s when i began to cry, because there was no way i could somehow return home. I’d be assumed dead and no one would have any way of knowing i was alive. Then eventually i would die here, from starvation or whatever was making that rustle in the trees—  
Wait. There’s a rustle in the trees. Either I’m saved or definitely going to die. Probably die. Nonononononononono!! I know i just had a whole dramatic inner monologue about coming to terms with dying in the near further but you know what scratch everything i had just thought, i will NOT DIE!!  
I glanced around, desperate for something to fight with, when something fell from the treetops above.  
I looked over and saw none other than a colored pencil. Seeing as I had no other options, I reached over to grab it, but ended up cutting myself with the tip.  
“Ouch!” I gasped, flinching back as I held my now bleeding hand near my stomach.  
I picked up the pencil again, careful to avoid the point, and noticed it was now the color of my blood.  
“Ah,” a strange voice said. “I see you’ve found my pencil. Well thank you, young lady. I’ll be taking that back now.”  
The rustle of the leaves increase as a strange figure emerged from the woods.  
The voices’ body had all sorts of pencils and paintbrushes and even a few scissors sticking out of it, and was at least three feet taller than me, but I couldn’t know for sure as they were hunched over, sending chills down my spine.  
I quickly stood, ready to defend myself, but very much so hoping I wouldn’t have to.  
A bead of sweat trickled down my face, which I had thought was from nerves, but I quickly realized that the temperature was increasing, maybe something else?  
I scanned the area for some sort of fire but saw... eyeballs in the trees. It was completely unnerving and slightly revolting.  
I stood in shock, paralyzed with fear.  
The being laughed at my terror, giggling in her eerie voice.  
“Why so green?” She taunted. “Afraid of little old me?”  
She hunched over more as she said this, until she was nearly my size, and mocked a confused, and almost sad face. Which quickly turned into a smirk.  
“Good,” she said, “just as you should be. Quiver and shake before me, your worst nightmare. You shall call me...” she paused, wether for dramatic affect or to think I would never know. “...Reka,” She finished. “Call me Reka.  
“Reka, the creature of blank minds and faces. Reka, the spirit of no imagination and zero creativity. Or being plain, colorless, bland-“ She monologued dramatically, putting emphasis on words here and there, and paused, for affect I assumed, “-and coloring inside the lines! Call me Reka, your worst nightmare.”  
I was slightly confused, but nonetheless frozen in terror, not wanting to die. Not this way. I tried to accept my inevitable doom but it proved more difficult than I would imagine.  
No! I wouldn’t die this way! I refuse to cower and die here, somewhere I don’t know, and by the hand of some art demon no less. I would not die, not when I had a project due tomorrow.  
“Okay look, I don’t want a fight, it unless you take me home, assuming this is your fault, I WILL fight you.”  
I held up my pencil and tried to look threatening, though my friends called me cute whenever I got mad so it most likely wouldn’t work.  
Surprisingly, it did.  
“I was NOT expecting you to fight back. Wow umm okay....” she rushed out, then beginning to mutter indistinguishably to herself.  
“...all the points....dangerous......check........fear-eyes........considering...” She made wild hand gestures as she said this, seemingly having some great internal conflict.  
I lowered my pencil slightly, my arm getting tired, and wondering when she would stop when she turned around to look at me and seemed almost...embarrassed?  
“He he...so um,” she began shyly, crossing her arms behind her and fiddling with her fingers. “This is kind of my first time haunting a nightmare.(“or haunting at all,” she added quietly to herself,) I usually just loom in shadows and steal ideas before you artsy people find them.  
“I actually got the idea to do this from a girl down in Florida, she’s really cool you’d like her, anyway I would like to apologize , I’ve never had much interaction with humans. Unless you count the ideas for conversations I’ve stolen from writers, but I don’t think they count for much. Aaand I’m rambling again. Sorry.”  
She said all of this kind of fast, and I was definitely confused.  
“Sooo...” I began, unsure where this sentence was going. “You don’t want to eat my soul or something?”  
She looked genuinely shocked and offended by this.  
“What?! No!! I would never!!” She squealed.  
“I only steal ideas to give you something to challenge you, it helps you realize if it’s what you truly want to do, and gives you something new to do. When you stop getting ideas that are like all your others, it forces you to think outside the box and try new perspectives.”  
The way she explained it made sense, though it was annoying having to find “new perspectives” and think outside the figurative “box”.  
I didn’t know what she wanted me to say, so I awkwardly cringed out a “thank you?”  
She beamed.  
“You’re welcome! You’re much nicer than any human I’ve ever come across!” She squeaked like a happy cartoon character, her once scary scissors and pencils turning to primary school supplies as we spoke.  
“Though,” she said quieter, “your the only I’ve actually bothered talking to.”  
Suddenly I felt very bad for her.  
‘No human interaction?’ I thought. ‘Not even an angry retort from an artist cursing to the wind at their misfortune of coming up with nothing for their project?’  
“Well,” I said, hesitant for what I was about to say next, not wanting to offend her, “If you take me home, I’ll talk to you any time you like. Heck, I can even recommend you a few people who would love for you to visit them. I would love to talk more now but I really need to work on my project. It’s kind of due in like seven hours.” I said, checking the time on my watch. (How accurate it was I didn’t know but I’m not going to be questioning anything ever again after tonight’s events.)  
She paled slightly.  
“OhmygoshIamSOSORRYILLTAKEYOUHOMERIGHTNOW!!” She blurted out. “I didn’t realize you were working on a project!!”  
“No it’s fine,” I insisted, not wanting her to freak out.  
“Are you sure? And would you really do that for me? That’s the nicest thing ever!!!” She held her hands up to face, almost like she was fangirling, and I swear I heard her whisper something about how she couldn’t wait until some “Ricardo? Richard? I don’t know. She couldn’t wait until someone heard.  
“Yeah of course,” I said, attempting at nonchalance but failing miserably.  
“Could I get home now?” I asked, completely ditching the idea of “subtle”.  
“Yes! Of course! Goodbye um..I’m sorry what your name again?”  
I laughed.  
“It’s Terri,” I responded.  
“Aw! That’s such a pretty name!” She cooed. “Well, goodbye Terri, see you soon!”  
I barely had time to wave back at her before I snapped awake on my desk, pencil marks smudged all over my hands, arms, paper, and no doubt my face too.  
I took a second to process what had happened while I stared at my empty piece of paper, having only dreamed of drawing on it in the first place, and thought about what had just occurred.  
A demon (who wasn’t really a demon at all) of artist block visited me and tried to haunt me but ended up with me volunteering to be her friend.  
Okay.  
That’s completely normal.  
Totally not insane.  
‘But whatever, I’m an artist.’ I thought. ‘Everyone knows I’m insane already.’  
It didn’t take much longer for me to get back to working on drawing my dream. The deadline was still tomorrow after all.  
After completing my work I quickly changed into my pajamas, and went to bed.  
‘What a day,’ I thought, still in a state of shock from the events that had unfolded before me.  
Despite bits being a bit odd and terrifying, it was still a pretty didily darn, heckin’ good day.  
I couldn’t wait for another. 

I breathed in the cool autumn air, ten years after I met Reka, and three after I stopped seeing her.  
Today that would change.  
I walked in the woods until I found the spot, the one we’d found that look identical to what I drew all those years ago.  
Sure enough, there she was. Sitting on a fallen log and humming to herself, watching the birds fly overhead and watching the leaves rustle from the hyper squirrels preparing for winter.  
She seemed so peaceful I almost sat and watched instead of approaching, but she heard me step on a dead branch and whipped around, her face breaking into a grin.  
My face matched hers and I walked up slowly, not quite believing she was still here, after all this time.  
I breathed in the crisp air once more.  
“Hey,” I said, “I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tysm for reading, if you liked this make sure to check out my other works! Pls leave any suggestions you have, and sorry for any errors it’s been a while since I’ve read through this, I wrote it last year ish. Hope quarantine is going as well as it can!


End file.
